Congratulations to the people of Iraq, who held an historic vote yesterday. Regardless of the wisdom of our choice to invade the country, we can all be happy to see the first steps toward what hopefully becomes a functioning democracy, complete with campaign-finance laws and gerrymandering. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to go to a polling place and cast a meaningful ballot after a lifetime of dictatorship, but I imagine it must be a remarkable feeling.
Seems like the vote went fairly smoothly, at least by local standards, although there were some unfortunate incidents. Even the Aljazeera account was largely indistinguishable from those in the Western press, except for these short paragraphs near the end:
After casting his vote in the western city of Ramadi, 21-year-old Jamal Mahmoud said: “I’m delighted to be voting for the first time because this election will lead to the American occupation forces leaving Ramadi and Iraq,” echoing a belief common among voters across the war-torn country.
In the holy city of Najaf, stronghold of the ruling Shia Islamist Alliance’s list No. 555, 40-year-old Abdullah Abdulzahra said: “I’ll vote for 555 because they’ll kill all Baathists.”
I think that Ann Coulter might have a future in Iraqi punditry.
The best news is that the Sunnis turned out in large numbers, indicating a willingness to join the new government as full participants. How smoothly that will go remains to be seen; some prognostications at Crooked Timber by Kieran Healy and Daniel Davies. Regardless, an historic occasion, hopefully the first of many in the region.
The Sunni Arabs are going the Sinn Fein way: ballet box in one hand, armalite in the other. They will get representation in the government while simultaneously attacking it from the outside. Any political representation is good, but it is a long way from over.
Hektor,
That’s not quite right, at least if you believe the New York Times. It seems that the average Sunni was always eager to vote, but feared being murdered by the Sunni terrorists living among them.
What you’ve written better applies to Sunni terrorists than to the Sunni in the street.
Amen. Here’s to hoping for a bright future for the Iraqis.
A historic occasion, and perhaps it opens the floodgates to more in the region, but a first in the region it is most definitely not.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3784765.stm
“I can’t imagine what it must feel like to go to a polling place and cast a meaningful ballot after a lifetime of dictatorship, but I imagine it must be a remarkable feeling.”
I simply cannot fathom the sort of mind that says things like this — apparently completely ignorant of 20th century history.
There are many millions of people, probably reaching at least a billion, all across South America, Africa, and Asia, who cast a “meaningful ballot” — hah, psychic are you — after a lifetime of dictatorship, and who never got to cast another one again.
Of course every democracy has a first ballot. But the ones that remain democracies also have all the other paraphernalia of civil society — free press, independent judiciary, transparency, no secret police torturing random people, a general satisfaction on the part of most of the population with the political structure and so on, none of which obtain in Iraq.
The Iraquis got to participate in a little bit of theater. To pretend that this equals democracy is ridiculous. And it’s not harmless ridculousness. Until the world gets serious about insisting on the other, equally important corellates to democracy, rather than treating voting in shambolic countries as cargo cult devotees, many countries will remain mired in misery.
OK Maynard, but you have to start somewhere, right? Or are you suggesting that everybody just sit down and wait for “free press, independent judiciary, transparency, no secret police torturing random people, a general satisfaction on the part of most of the population with the political structure and so on” to somehow materialize on its own?
Dissident,
A. Iraq definitely wasn’t as bad as some dicatorships around and the very least Saddam’s subsidizing of basic public neccessities with oil money meant that electricty, education, and other essentials were available. While I agree that Maynard’s comments are certianly cynical, the fact remains we had no real reason to interrupt a functioning country even if for “democratic” ends. Waiting probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea, after all isn’t that our strategy wirh China? with Cuba? with all of the developed democracies in the middle east?
–
A
Dissident, I don’t think there is any chance of getting the the other things right as long as US soldiers are in Iraq.
You cannot have a transparant fair judicial system in Iraq because of the resistance against the occupaton. People suspected of being insurgents have been imprisoned. There are more than 10,000 of them. The Iraqis cannot investigate these people properly to see if the are indeed ”guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”. They simply do not have the resources to do that.
Releasing these people is no option either as long as US soldiers are in Iraq. Most Sunnis regard attacks on US soldiers as lawful. So, even if they got a fair trial and were convicted of attacking US soldiers, that would only cause further divisions in the country.
This prisoner issue, which is causing anger among the Sunnis, will only get worse over time. So, the sooner the US leaves Iraq, the better the outcome will be.
Sean, I am pleasantly surprised that your opinion about the polls agrees with mine.
Andrew, this Dissident was one of the minority cringing at the quality of “proof” presented to the Security Council by Powell for the existence of WMDs in Iraq, rolling his eyes at the idiocy of suggesting a link between fundamentalist Bin Laden and Arab socialist Saddam and agreeing wholeheartedly with Joscha Fischer’s “I am not convinced” about the stated reasons for going to war (I hasten to remind you that the whole “spreading democracy” thing is an afterconstruction put in place after the WMD nonsense became too patently ridiculous to maintain even for the US administration).
On the other hand, waiting was no easy option either. Support for the UN sanctions was crumbling, courtesy of long-standing trade partners to Iraq France and Russia (not to mention easily duped Western media) and time was running out. If the Baath regime had been allowed to stay in power, by now it would have been free once more to do what it certainly did want to do (but had been prevented from doing under the sanctions). After starting wars of aggression with Iran and Kuwait and firing all the Scuds it could at Israel, it’s not like a sensible person could harbor any doubts about what would then have followed. War was coming to the Middle East one way or another. The real question was when to fight it: before the Baathists could convert their petrodollars to arms or after they’d done so. What would you have done, if it had been your call?
Yes, it was a preemptive strike. No, saying so openly was not an option, and certainly not an argument which could ever have passed the UN. Hence the spin and creative “intelligence”.
But that was then and this is now. The war has happened. The US is there. The situation needs to be dealt with such as it is, not such as we may wish that it would be. There are things which need to happen before US troops can pull out, or the war will just have to be fought all over again in a few short years, to an even higher cost in material and human terms. Elections are one of those things. Complaining about them is not constructive.
Dissident:
I don’t think this is a realistic scenario. Saddam was a ”good enough” person for the US before he invaded Kuwait. Iraq and the US even held joint naval exercises. When an Iraqi missile accidentally hit a US ship, killing a few marines, Bush Sr. accepted Saddam’s apologies.
The fact that the UN sanctions were crumbling was because the US and Britain were blocking any attempt to (partially) lift the sanctions. Sanctions were imposed because Saddam had to disarm his WMD stockpiles. We know now that Saddam did indeed disarm completely and that the ”missing” Anthrax etc. didn’t exist.
So, sanctions had to be lifted a long time ago, but the US and Britain were abusing their power in the SC. And there was no way that Saddam could not reconstitute his WMD after the lifting of sanctions, because Iraq would still be under long term monitoring.
All the mistakes made with Iraq are currently being repeated with Iran. The intelligence is handled in the same way. And on the diplomatic front it isn’t much better either. The war with Iraq started because, even though Saddam had no WMD, he could somehow obtain WMD later, which he could give to Bin Laden. In case of Iran (according to Nicholas Burns) it is that if we let them enrich uranium, then some time later they could kick out the IAEA inspectors and make a bomb.
So, if the US doesn’t take a more realistic attitude, a war with Iran is also ”inevitable”.
Attacking Iran and installing a democracy there would be an unspeakably devastating catastrophe for the planet. The world would be much better off with Iran lead by an oppressive, nuclear-armed, Holocaust-denying, anti-semitic, Armageddon-yearining, medieval religious zealot bent on the annihilation of Israel the apocalytic return of “The Twelfth Iman”.
By the same token, Saddam should be reinstalled.
It should be obvious to anyone that the real danger to the world is not men like Saddam and Ahmadinejad but that evil, democracy-spreading Bush.
#11: Yes, Saddam was “good enough” before he invaded Kuwait. Then he invaded Kuwait.
Sanctions were put in place to force Saddam to disarm – and stay disarmed. Had they been lifted, he would have rebuilt his offensive capabilities as fast as he possibly could. Maintaining the sanctions was not abuse of power, it was the only way to avoid war. But in the end, the “humanitarians” had their way.
As for Iran, with a few centuries worth of oil in the ground it needs a domestic nuclear energy program like strings need more vacua. The real objective is obvious, and with a president stating openly and repeatedly that Israel should be destroyed, it’s not even a secret.
Belizean,
Bush is indeed the real danger to the world. It really doesn’t matter much that he means well for the world and that democracy is a good thing. What is relevant is that he needs to use force to do that. And to maintain the newly implemented democratic system a lot of force would be needed on a continual basis, as we see now in Iraq.
Pol Pot also meant well for his people, he just needed to use force to deal with the people who were standing in the way of his vision of an ideal society.
Dissident,
The more nuclear energy Iran generates the more oil they can sell. Also, the US dictating to Iran that they cannot put their own uranium in their own centrifuges for use in their own powerplants (the whole fuel cycle closely monitored by IAEA inspectors as required under the NPT) is never going to work. This has become an issue of sovereignity. Even if Iran does not need to enrich their own uranium, they will never sign away their right to do that.
The US has divided the world into two types of countries: The Axis of Evil and the Axis of Good. If you are in the Axis of Good, you can do a lot of evil things, but the US will continue to back you. So, Israel can continue to occupy Palestinian lands, they can bomb refugee camps, etc.
Turkey can continue to deny the genocide on the Armenians. They can continue to persecute the Kurds without any US condemnations.
If you belong to the Axis of Evil, everything you do is a bad thing. So, the elections in Iran, although not very fair, were much more democratic then the elections in Egypt. But you won’t here Bush say that.
There is one exception: If you act against US interests then you risk being moved from the Axis of Good to the Axis of Evil, as Saddam found out. Strangely this happens retrospectively, violating causality. So, just a few weeks after Halabja a US senator met with Saddam, praising him for being a force of stability. But after the invasion of Kuwait Saddam has suddenly become a dangerous tyrant armed with WMD, even though no WMD were used in Kuwait.
Had Saddam not invaded Kuwait, he would still be on the ”Good side”. He would probably have nuclear bombs by now and stockpiles of WMD. Rumsfeld would regularly meet with Saddam to talk about the use of Iraqi bases.
Had Robin Cook not convinced the US to make concessions to Libya about the trial of the two agents, Libya would be in a similar situation as Iraq. Ghaddafi would be guilty of ignoring UN sanctions. He would be accused of having WMD, ties with terrorists etc. According to the Neo-Cons, it would only be a matter of time before Ghaddafi would attack Western or Israeli targets using WMD, so a pre-emptive war would be inevitable. And Saddam would be thanked for being part of the ”coalition of the willing” 🙂
Count Iblis, you seem to be missing a few facts about Iran. It’s not only the US that’s rightly worried about their obvious nuclear weapons program, it’s the EU too, to the point that Iran has been offered turnkey reactors, ready to run, if they just stop their own nuclear program. If that program really were about energy, what would be the point of redeveloping from scratch technology which is readily available in far more evolved form from commercial sources? None, of course.
As for monitoring, you should know that the IAEA declared Iran as non-compliant back in September, that it’s been a continuous cat-and-mouse game ever since, and that the latest move was announced less than a day ago, with Iran again suspending its “cooperation” with the controllers. You should also know that el Baradei has publicly estimated Iran as being only months away from a bomb if they keep running those centrifuges. All the while Ahmadinejad keeps hurling threats around him as if there were no tomorrow.
But of course, this is somehow all America’s fault, I’m sure.
There’s much “if not this, if not that” in your post. Well, yes; actions have consequences. If one day a friend of yours were to pull out a gun and shoot somebody, I presume that you would no longer view him quite in the same light as you used to. Your having been friends up to that point would not make you an accomplice, but not reevaluating your relations afterwards would certainly make you a dumbass.
Things happen, we learn from them we adapt – or we go under.
Count Iblis,
The idea that the use of force is always to be avoided — even to defeat pre-existing oppressive forces — is an untenable position.
It’s a bit like saying with regard to medicine the that use of surgery is always to be avoided.
Then a guy who pushes an old lady into the path of an oncoming bus is morally equivalent to a guy who pushes an old lady out of the bus’ path — both are pushers of old ladies.
What matters is not whether you use force, but whether as a consequence you’ve improved the world. Pol Pot’s use of force increased oppression (e.g. Killing fields, no elections). George Bush’s use of it drastically decreased oppression (e.g. economic boom in Iraq, elections).
Dissident,
Iran has had a bad experience because of US sanctions. The US blocked Iran from obtaining nuclear technology it was allowed to have under the NPT. Companies faced US sanctions if they delivered nuclear technology to Iran. This meant that Iran had to get their nuclear technology covertly, which is against the NPT rules.
Now, the EU-3 did recognise that Iran’s violalations of the NPT were not all their fault so a deal was done two years ago. Iran would not be referred to the SC in exchange for negotiations about trade deals/enrichment etc. Also Iran signed an additional protocol to the NPT allowing the IAEA to conduct much more intrusive inspections.
The talks broke down in August, primarily because Iran would have to sign away their right to enrich uranium permanently. The US position that the fact that Iran wants to have their own nuclear program proves that they want to make nuclear bombs doesn’t make sense. No country in the world will sign away their rights. Perhaps one could have reached a deal under which Iran imports enriched uranium and agrees not to use their enrichment facilities for a period of a few years. But the US position has always been that the ultra-centrifuges at Natanz should be destroyed.
Also note that Iran hasn’t started yet to enrich yet. All they’ve done so far is to make uranium hexafluoride. And Iran only threatened to stop applying the additional protocol if referred to the SC. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. The additional protocol is a voluntary measure Iran took to build confidence. Iran is asked to fulfill all their obligations under the NPT plus more but they aren’t allowed to excercise their rights which they have under the NPT. No country would accept that.
Belizean,
After the end of the first Gulf war and the uprisings in Iraq, Saddam used to execute a few hundred people per year. In today’s Iraq you have the same number of deaths due to violence per week. So, Bush’s intervention has made things worse.
Minimum number of civilians killed by Saddam over 24 years: 300 K
deaths/per = 300K/24years = 12.5 K/year
Maximum number of civilians killed during/after U.S. invasion 2.75 years ago: 31 K
deaths/per = 31K/2.75 years = 11.3 K/year
Count Iblis, you keep avoiding the simple fact that in 2005, nobody needs a domestic nuclear technology program in order to have nuclear energy (even if they are in need of additional energy sources, which Iran obviously is not). Civilian reactors are a commercial commodity. Iran could buy the product of half a century of technological development at a fraction of the cost for developing its own first-generation version. It’s been offered to do so, but prefers to keep sparring with the IAEA and the international community (all the while its president keeps reminding us of the importance of destroying Israel). Why?
Utterly disingenuous.
Iraqbodycount (your source for that figure) counts only deaths reported in the Press. If it went unreported, it isn’t counted in that 31K. The 31K is, therefore, a strict lower bound.
The Lancet study (I’ll leave the refutation of the “critics” of the Lancet study to others) pegged the number at around 100,000 civilians killed. And that was a year ago.
Strange as it may seem, Iran is an importer of gasoline. Anyway, a US govt. perspective on Iran’s energy situation is here:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/iran.html
For a count of non-combatants killed by military action in Iraq,
see http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
Dissident:
Why did Greece want Macedonia to change their National Flag? Why are the holy cites in Jerusalem such a difficult diplomatic issue? Why did Ethiopia fight a war with Eritrea over a piece of barren wasteland?
So, unless the US finds ”smoking gun evidence” of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, arguments like ”Iran’s nuke program doesn’t make economic sense etc.” do not show that Iran wants to make nukes.
And you could just as well use similar arguments to show that a nuclear weapons program doesn’t make economic sense for Iran. Chemical and biological weapons are much cheaper and faster to produce and weaponize…
Like I wrote in an earlier posting, no country in the world would sign away their rights easily. In this case, because the US (Iran’s enemy) is behind the drive to stop Iran from enriching uranium, it has zero chance of succeeding.
Belizean, see Jacques’ reply and also note that you included wars and uprisings in your figure.
The relevant question to ask is how many people more are dying as a result of the invasion. So, you estimate the death rate as it would be now had Iraq not been invaded and you compare that with the actual death rate.
Unless you have strong evidence that Saddam was about to gas the Kurds again or start another war with Iran, your figures are just propaganda.
#22: In short, you are saying Iran is being irrational (duh!). So we have a country being irrational, repeatedly calling for the distruction of a regional neigbour and suspending cooperation with the international agency which is supposed to watch over its superfluous nuclear “energy” program, which just happens to be months away from a bomb (sheer coincidence, of course).
And you ask why everybody (no, not just the US) wants that program to be scrapped? OK. Since you are evidently comfortable with madmen having nukes, there’s evidently no point to discussing this further with you.
Sorry Jacques,
But the Lancet article is thoroughly unconvincing. Here’s what’s wrong with it.
1. Methodology
They surveyed Iraqi households to determine how many household members:
(a) died in the 1.5 years before the start of the U.S. liberation, and
(b) how many died in the 1.5 years after.
They argue that (b) — (a) = 100,000.
Pre-war Estimate 4 x Too Low
Lancet estimate of pre-war infant death rate: 29 per 1000
UNICEF 2002 estimate of infant death rate: 108 per 1000
Lancet survey: 988 households
UNICEF survey: 24,000 households
[Saddam had responded to U.N. sanctions against Iraq with rationing programs that were effectively killing children.]
Post-War Estimate Too High
Consider Lancet survey in Falujah (before U.S. cleanup operations in Nov 2004)
30 households surveyed containing 240 people reporting 52 deaths.
Reported cause of death: violence by Americans
Reported victims: mostly women and children.
Death rate = 52/240 = 216 per 1000.
Estimated deaths in Falujah (pop 285,000) = 285K x 0.216 = 61 K.
U.S. soldiers would have had to have killed 61,000 civilians, mostly women and children, in Falujah alone, before U.S. operations there in Nov 2004. Not credible.
This vastly exceeds estimates of civilian deaths during U.S. operations in Falujah in Nov 2004.
Why didn’t civilians flee, as they did when U.S. operations in Falujah commenced?
How could 60,000 people (mostly women and children) have been killed without reducing Falujah to rubble?
If 60,000 were killed, more must have been wounded. Assuming 5 were wounded for every 1 killed, then 300,000 people were wounded. More than Faljuha’s population. Why wasn’t this noticed?
The same methods used to obtain the clearly erroneous Falujah results were used throughout selected regions of Iraq.
2. Lack of Corroborating Evidence
The Lancet team was reluctant to ask for proof of adult death and did not ask for proof of children’s deaths.
“Interviewers were initially reluctant to ask to see death certificates because this might have implied they did not believe the respondents, perhaps triggering violence. Thus, a compromise was reached for which interviewers would attempt to confirm at least two deaths per cluster.”
A “cluster” = 30 households. Only 2 reported deaths needed to be confirmed for 30 households. Pretty low standard. Especially given their admission of the presence of violent emotions in those surveyed. Wouldn’t an interviewee liable to attack an interviewer be at least as liable to lie to him?
3. Statistically Insignificant Conclusion
The Lancet authors’ conclusion:
95% Confidence Interval of increased deaths: 8,000 to 194,000.
They are 95% confident that between 8,000 and 194,000 additional deaths occurred. Apply this standard to other areas:
We are 95% sure that you have between 8 months and 194 months (16 years) left to live.
We are 95% sure that you’ll have to pay between $8,000 and $194,000 for that condo.
We are 95% sure that your salary raise will be between 8% and 194%.
We are 95% sure that we have enough fuel onboard to fly between 80 miles and 1940 miles.
This huge confidence interval merely reflects the statistical insignificance of their result. It short, it’s garbage.
4. Authors Are Admittedly Anti-War
“I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives,” Les Roberts, lead author.
5. Common Sense
Why did no reporter break the career-making story of 30,000 to 60,000 women and children being killed by U.S. troops in the Falujah region?
If 100,000 people were killed between in the 18 months before the Lancet article (Sep 2004), it means over 180 people died each day. Where were the tens of thousands of funerals and associated demonstrations that normally follow Muslim deaths caused directly or indirectly by infidels?
Rumored Koran Desecration ==> massive protest marches. Kill 100,000 Muslims ==> negligible protest marches.
It is possible that the authors were attempting, with the aid of the Lancet editors, to influence the U.S. election scheduled to occur within a week after the release of their article?
Is it possible that researcher bias could, intentionally or unintentionally, have altered the result of this study by, for example, limiting post-war surveys to known hotspots, failing to corroborate deaths, and underestimating pre-war deaths by a factor of 4?